Chapter 33: Definitely

The waiting room had been filled with a lively atmosphere before I entered. Students chatted excitedly, recounting their battles, boasting about their luck, analyzing their opponents’ techniques, and wishing each other well.

The injured kids had, at most, just superficial cuts.

Saying it had been lively means it isn’t now.

Everyone stares at me. Some with fear, some with cold eyes.

Some gazes felt accusatory.

‘Half of this is probably my blood.’

‘But perceiving gazes is subjective.’

“You didn’t need to come to my class after all.”

I had been tucked away in a corner, since the students in the waiting room seemed to be avoiding me, when someone vaguely familiar approached and spoke.

“If you had said you had this much ability, you could have been placed in at least C-rank, and after properly learning how to fight, maybe even in the A-rank class.”

“This was my first time getting injured this badly.”

One-Eye looks at me as if I’m talking nonsense.

Then he sighs and continues.

“You could have not killed him.”

“The opponent was already completely subdued.”

“That’s why I looked at the people holding clipboards and evaluating me.”

“Those people are just evaluators.”

“Then since you can’t leave a villain who hasn’t surrendered alive, I must have been right.”

I doubt Si-hyun unni would have surrendered, but I could have easily subdued her.

She was someone so weak she just carried a gun around.

Forget letting her live; they hunted her down and killed her like a wild animal.

Though saying it would be pointless.

“Go back to your room and wash up.”

“Your opponent will probably show up tomorrow.”

“As a student who, at least against you, won’t die.”

“So, a walkover?”

“Surprisingly, for an F-rank, you won.”

It wasn’t surprising.

Somehow, I knew this world was capable of such things.

Even now, somewhere, a lab rat must be diligently eating the food waste in a black bag.

Getting electrocuted if it closes its mouth and refuses to eat.

Sighing, I spoke to One-Eye’s retreating figure, who looked utterly fed up.

“What you teach is similar, isn’t it?”

“Making someone who can stop and run away able to not run away but move forward.”

“Even making them run, without hesitation, towards a place where they’ll soon die.”

“At least those kids run towards villains.”

“What’s the difference?”

It seemed like a question asked out of genuine confusion, rather than mockery.

The man just stared at me for a long time.

Though no answer came.

After returning to my room, I fell while washing up.

A hand suddenly appeared before my eyes.

A hand covered in blood, each finger, weakened from being crushed by an axe blade, yet desperately trying to push me away, trembling with the desire to live.

That palm, which only felt ticklish before, was incredibly heavy.

Heavy enough to suddenly make me fall on my butt.

Even after wiping my face, I felt something remaining.

So I carved it out with a blade.

It returned to normal, but I still felt something lingering.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Villains are like this, aren’t they?”

There’s no way an answer would come back even if I spoke to the mirror.

Suddenly, I blurted out the words without realizing it.

As if expecting someone to answer.

I roughly dried myself with a towel, got dressed, then, despite the weather, took out a fan, pointed it at my head, and turned it on.

The cold air blew, slowly drying my hair.

I felt slightly cold.

I took out a cup of sweet coffee with sugar and the cookies Hye-yeon brought and nibbled on them.

Though tasty, should I say it was a bit too sweet?

After a bite or two, I left them on the table and just stared.

Then a cookie on the table turned into the boy whose face was crushed by the axe, reaching out to me.

Since it didn’t disappear even when I rubbed my eyes, I took out a small bottle from the handbag inside the wardrobe and tapped some white powder onto the cookie.

I inhaled a bit through my nose and poured the rest into my mouth.

It still didn’t disappear, so I made another line, inhaled, and finally, it vanished before my eyes.

Whether I woke up in the middle of the night, woke up to the morning sun, or before falling asleep, what I saw on the ceiling was the plaster ceiling with the sea wave pattern.

Though I can’t reach it even if I stretch out my hand, at least the back of my hand is much clearer than the ceiling.

Doing this, I feel like I had some kind of goal, that I had many things I wanted to do, but nothing comes to mind, and I just feel suffocated.

Even if I crawl out of this small room because I feel suffocated, walk around the academy, and leave through the main gate, what’s there?

My hometown is a place I don’t want to visit.

The hideout where Si-hyun unni was, now that she’s dead, there’s no reason to go there.

Though they said it’s already gone.

I have nowhere to go.

Even if I leave, no matter what I do.

I get up and look at the things Si-hyun unni left behind.

The photo, well. A cute girl who doesn’t resemble me at all, someone I can’t understand why she projected onto me.

The rabbit mask, the guns, the card.

They said the card has a lot of money on it.

The man called the chairman gave it to me without touching a penny, so even if I took half as a service fee, he probably wouldn’t have complained.

Though I barely used it.

Thinking I should wear the rabbit mask from now on when going to the lab or somewhere for my “hobbies,” I picked up the guns.

I casually tucked the pistol in my waistband and picked up the shotgun.

Then, without realizing it, I pointed the muzzle at my chest, struggled and groaned, and pulled the trigger.

With an explosive sound of something shattering, I felt myself slammed onto the bed.

‘I’ll have to change the bed.’

‘Or I could just sleep on the floor.’

‘No, wait, the room will be changed anyway.’

The thought that someone might enter this room made me think of the marbles in the bathroom.

I put them roughly in a convenience store plastic bag I had used when buying instant coffee and left the room.

It’s dawn.

The night sky was as dark as always.

Not a single bright moon in sight.

My clothes, with a hole in the chest, look like something only a slut would wear, but since there’s a hole in my body too, it’s not exactly indecent, is it?

At least I covered all the fleshy parts with cloth.

Though I felt a squelching sensation as the flesh knitted back together.

Along with the clinking sound of a single bullet, unable to pierce through and remaining inside, falling out, I left the dorm building.

Since I destroyed the CCTV last time, I had no worries.

I tossed the marbles into the pond, took out a cigarette from my pocket, stuck it in my mouth, and lit it.

A restless heart, yet somehow feeling joyful from the drugs, the music playing in my head isn’t the jazz I was listening to in my room, but the waltz from the movie with the strange ahjussi eating sannakji.

And me, watching that movie on the sofa, eating the pasta I made because I couldn’t stand the late-night hunger pangs.

The mirage hanging in the air shows many things, but none of them are here.

Around the time the hole in my chest was almost closed, feeling the drugs wearing off, I returned to my room.

It doesn’t seem like the uneasiness can be resolved just by smoking.

‘Because it was my first murder.’

‘Because I killed someone for the first time.’

‘Maybe not, but it felt like my first murder.’

‘If I can still see the hand of the boy whose name and face I can’t remember.’

Thinking objectively, among all the things I’ve killed, there hasn’t been a single human.

Team Leader Joo, the Department Head were crazy people busy bringing in kids and turning them into something like me, so calling them human is a bit difficult.

Just because they talk and think like humans doesn’t make them human.

The test subjects were all lab rats, so they probably wanted to die.

I let all the kids who wanted to live go.

The researchers all deserved to die, and the same went for those academy students.

But the academy students will all grow up and kill Si-hyun unni someday.

So maybe it doesn’t matter.

I returned to my room, washed up roughly, and put on new clothes.

It’s quite nice that I can buy a new uniform anytime from the store on academy grounds.

Did they say they mass-produce uniforms because there’s so much fighting?

What should I do with my flesh and blood splattered on the walls?

I don’t think I’ll clean it.

It doesn’t seem necessary to worry about.

I threw the clothes with the hole onto the bloodstained bed, sat on the chair, and hummed for a long time. Around the time the sun started rising, I left the room.

This time, even when I went to the waiting room and waited for my turn, none of my classmates spoke to me.

Word of what happened yesterday must have already spread.

Because someone died.

‘I made excuses in my mind.’

‘That it was just a momentary lapse of judgment, a sudden headache.’

‘Just like a drunkard making nonsensical excuses after doing something wrong.’

‘But I could have stopped it.’

‘Before putting the boy into the black bag like food waste, I could have stopped it all.’

‘Before a monstrous creature like me attacked an ordinary student, someone great could have appeared from somewhere and stopped me.’

‘Surely.’